


Catharsis - 10/30

by imachar



Series: 30 ficlets series [10]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angst, M/M, Medical Procedures, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-24
Updated: 2013-02-24
Packaged: 2017-12-03 13:44:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/698886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imachar/pseuds/imachar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chris and Phil decide to tough out the aftermath of Chris’s second round of bio-remediation therapy on their own. Alice comes to the rescue and in the process she and Chris dig themselves deep into post-Narada angst. This is deeply <i>deeply</i> angsty, just warning you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Catharsis - 10/30

**Author's Note:**

> Another part of the Thirty Ficlets series, un-beta'd as always...

 

There’s pain when they administer the chelation solution, an ice-cold, searing agony that stretches out over hours, ebbing and flowing as the custom-designed bio-chemical remediation fluid diffuses slowly into Chris’ veins. It makes his breath catch in his throat and his muscles spasm as each wash of fluid hits his heart and is flushed through his arteries, but it’s nothing he can’t tolerate; years of carefully cultivated self-discipline lending him a patient endurance that serves him as well now as it did through all those hellish hours in the terrifying dark of the Narada.

And if there are moments when the pain is too much – needle-sharp, like a hot wire threading though his veins, drawn-out until his control slips and his fingers go rigid and bloodless on the arm of the wide reclining bio-chair – Phil’s right there, his voice a low, soothing whisper, his hands gentle and strong as they unwrap Chris’s fingers from the armrest and twine them with his own, sharing the pain as Chris grips tightly enough to bruise.

“You’re doing great, Chris. Really great. Not much longer.” He looks up for a moment, and Chris follows his gaze, both of them checking the level of the remaining bio-remediation fluid. “Just half an hour and it’ll be done.”

Chris takes a sharp breath at that, grinding his teeth as he tries to stifle a less-than-stoic whimper and then when the spasm passes and he can breathe again he manages a fleeting, defiant smile. “I can do that.” But then the bravado falters and it takes all his courage to keep the whine out of his voice as he asks, “…and then we’re going home?”

“Then we’re going home.” There’s a quiet reassurance in Phil’s voice and Chris relaxes just a fraction, the pain easing as he sinks back into the cushioned chair. Just the thought of home – safe, secure and above all free of strangers – is enough to alleviate the worst of the agony and he loosens his grip slightly, rubbing his thumb gently over the back of Phil’s hand in mute gratitude.

After his first round of therapy, three months ago, the bio-remediation team had insisted on him staying in a room at Starfleet Medical for a few days so they could monitor the effects of the disturbingly toxic mix of chemicals that they are using to flush the slug secretions out of his blood and tissues and its not an experience he wants to repeat. The misery of trying to stubbornly hide his pain overlain with the crippling humiliation of unrelenting nausea – bouts of vomiting interspersed with fevered soaking sweats – all under the watchful gaze of a whole cadre of people he didn’t _fucking know_ had been almost unbearable.

Expecting the same routine this time, he’d been surprised, and unutterably grateful, when Phil had announced that they didn’t need to pack a bag for this round as Chris would be coming home straight away. They knew what to expect, and Phil had managed to reassure the Head of the bio-remediation unit that he was more than capable of providing whatever after-care Chris needed. Chris had almost protested, fully aware that providing round-the-clock care for the first three or four days he was home would be enormously exhausting for Phil. But he hadn’t, and he’s more than a little ashamed that his need for privacy and some semblance of control will take such a heavy toll on Phil over the next few days.

“Love you, you know?” His voice is thin, breathless with pain and he has to swallow hard against the next wave of fire in his veins.

“ ‘course you do.” Phil smiles – a tired, fond quirk of his mouth – and he leans in to wipe a cold, damp cloth across Chris’s throat and the upper part of his chest, soothing the irritated skin where the pressure-osmosis patch is delivering the remediation fluid directly to his subclavain vein. He’s workmanlike, efficient and cool, and Chris knows that he’s doing his damndest to not show too much pain, too much emotion – trying to bolster Chris’s tenuous self-control with his own until they can get home.

****

Much of the following forty-eight hours is mercifully lost to periods of fever-induced semi-consciousness, the combination of bone-deep agony and severe nausea only impinging on Chris’s fugue-state when Phil rouses him to deal with the sweat-soaked sheets and ease him into clean clothes.

When he finally wakes to some semblance of coherence the bedroom is dimly lit and cool, and Chris is aware of a presence in a chair by the bed; aware too that it isn’t Phil. His heart rate accelerates and for just a second he panics, the irrational fears of his PTSD-induced nightmares mingling with the distress of some unknown, unwelcome stranger seeing him at his weakest, and then there’s a hand on his forehead, warm, strong and utterly familiar.

“Hi, honey. You awake?”

“Mom.” All the tension goes out of him, the relief so overwhelming that his voice shakes slightly as he goes on, “Did Phil call you?”

“No, that stubborn ass. I commed to see how you were and I caught him looking like hell. So I came up. He didn’t fight too hard.”

“Good.” Chris manages a smile but it’s brief, washed away by the rising tide of nausea that rolls through him and, with a bitten-off groan, he leans to the side, trusting that Alice’s reflexes will prevent him from throwing up all over the bed, or the floor. He shakes as the first rush of saliva floods his mouth, spitting it into the bowl that she’s grabbed and then convulses through an endless, agonizing, bout of retching that brings up nothing but bile and the meager supply of stomach acid that he’s produced in the last few hours.

“Fuck, I hate this.” His voice comes back finally, when its over, and he’s lying back on the pillows, face washed and a cool cloth laid across his forehead. Part of him thinks he really shouldn’t use that kind of language in front of his mother, but he’s too tired to come up with anything more creative and anyway, she’s undoubtedly heard worse from the horse breeders and ranch hands that she works with.

“I know, I know.” She slips her hand into his and rubs her thumb across his wrist, careful to avoid the livid bruise left when they’d pulled out the PVC line that had been used to draw blood and provide hydration during treatment. “But this part’s is nearly over, yes?”

“If last time is any guide, yeah. I’ve got a window of a few hours now before it gets bad again.”

“Good, you can get some rest. I’ll stay with you and let Phil sleep as long as he can.”

“How is he?”

“Exhausted. You shouldn’t have tried to do this yourselves.”

“I know…sorry…stubborn.”

“Yes, both of you.” She squeezes a little more firmly, the mix of admonishment and love in the touch almost too much and he has to grit his teeth for a moment, taking a deep breath so he can swallow down the lump in his throat.

“Rest, that’s an order.”

Chris closes his eyes and tries to summon a smart-ass response. “ ‘m an admiral now, don’t know that I still have to follow your orders.”

“I’ve been giving orders to an admiral for almost twenty years, sweetheart – now hush.”

He tries to chuff the faintest laugh in response, but it’s shot through with too much guilt and regret to come out as anything other than a whimper. The thought of his father and their utter failure to communicate since Chris came back to Earth – a broken hero, acclaimed by everyone except the one person in Command whose opinion he actually gives a fuck about – is too painful to dwell on.

“Shh, come on, try to sleep.” Alice gives his hand another firm squeeze and Chris relents, letting himself sink back on the pillows and drift for a while, anchored by the solid, flesh-and-bone reality of her touch until he finally falls into an uneasy sleep.

_Cold, it’s always the first sensation when a dream is going bad; the chill of hopeless fear, manifest this time as the seeping damp of the Narada and Chris feels the rising tide of panic as the nightmare comes into focus. His terrors are all related, all variations on a theme; a fractured, chaotic mess of all his previous captivities – restraint and pain and terror and overwhelming helplessness._

_But since the Narada the familiar fear and futility of his own inevitable death is magnified unimaginably as he watches the flash of vaporizing ocean and bloom of pulverized crust as Earth slowly implodes – the green and blue and wispy gray/white irretrievably lost, and with it the twelve billion souls on its surface._

_The horror of it suspends time, stretches it into an endless moment of fathomless black silence that is filled only by the heart-stopping panic of knowing that he’s still alive, pinned to a wall like an insect to watch it over, and over, and over again. And then, when he thinks it can’t get any worse, when he’s becoming inured to the sound of Nero’s voice, taunting him with his weakness, his failure, his cowardice, the voice fades and mutates and becomes Josh’s deep, distinctive growl, the words unchanged, the tone saturated with a cold, shamed revulsion._

He comes out of it on a panicked inhale, his chest so tight it feels like his heart’s going to explode, desperately trying to hold back the frantic whine of “…Dad…” and even in the midst of his distress he can feel Alice’s hand go still and tense as she realizes what he’s said.

Alice pauses for only a second and then her fingers are moving again, stroking through his hair, whispering softly. “Chris…Chris…hush…it’s okay…just a dream. It’s just a dream….hush…” Her voice is pitched low, the same soothing tone that he remembers from his childhood, when he was sick or scared in the middle of the night and she would sit by his side in the dark of his room until he slept again.

He catches his breath and grits his teeth, still shaking, wrapping his fingers tight in the sheet until Alice covers his hands with hers and rubs firm, gentle circles on the clammy skin. “Stop fighting so hard, Chris; stop being brave, just for a little while.”

He takes a ragged breath and turns his head to bury his face in the pillow, grateful when his mother’s only response is to stroke his hair and murmur quiet reassurances. It’s only when he’s breathing slowly through the tremors, his pulse settling and his heart rate dropping back close to normal that she goes on. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

There’s no pressure in her request, just an unspoken coda hanging in the air and Chris knows that she’s really asking if he wants to talk about why Josh is part of his nightmare, and apparently the part that’s terrifying enough to snap him out of it.

Her thumb traces a circle on his temple, soothing the low-grade ache that’s developing behind his eyes, infinitely patient, waiting out his unease and indecision until he can find the courage to voice the horror of nightmares that always end in crippling guilt and despair.

When he does finally speak, the words come slowly – faltering and inarticulate – with long silent pauses as he gathers his strength and fights down the urge to let the grief and pain suck him under. It’s only the steady weight of her hand stroking firmly across his back that keeps him going; the occasional squeeze of his shoulder or stroke through his hair, that fortifies him until he reaches the worst part.

“It’s just…” He pauses, tries to steady his voice and rubs hard along the ache in his jaw, where it’s been clenched in tension, and as he continues his tone is flat and dead, like he’s delivering a mission status report. “…the worst is at the end, when Earth’s gone and I’m still alive and Nero’s still mocking and then it’s not his voice anymore, it’s Dad…” Chris closes his eyes, unwilling to meet Alice’s gaze, ashamed of the fear and the pitiful sense of self-loathing that she has to be able to read in him.

“Oh Chris, why your Dad?”

He shakes his head and tries a couple of times to articulate the guilt that he knows is irrational, but that he still can’t shed.

“I knew he was on Peliar Zel and everyone on Earth was going to die…I knew…” he pauses unable to get out the rest of the sentence and Alice runs the back of her hand up his cheek. ”Look at me.” The command in her voice is another echo of his childhood. As indulged as he had been, she had never let him get away with avoiding the necessary pain of life and he does as he’s bidden, looking up into her face, confused and sorrowful.

“You knew what?” She frowns, clearly trying to work out what he’s _not_ saying. “That he was going to be left…alone?”

“That, yeah, and that he was going to know it was me, my fucking fault that Earth was gone, that you were gone…”

“Chris.” There’s a firmness in her tone, like she’s about to tell him he’s being an idiot, and it’s surprisingly comforting in the midst of all the sympathy he’s been subjected to over the last months, “Chris, I know it’s hard to be rational about this, and I know your father can be a little self-absorbed sometimes, but I doubt losing us would have overridden the 12 billion other deaths, and you _know_ he doesn’t blame you for that. He wasn’t allowed to speak at the Board of Inquiry, but I know you saw his input on the written report.”

“I know, I know…but he hasn’t said a goddamn word to me, about any of this. I know he’s been gone a lot, but damn, he avoids me when you and I comm, he won’t come up to the city unless he has to, it’s like he can’t stand to be near me.”

“That’s hardly fair, Chris. You two have never talked when things are bad between you.” And she’s right, Alice has always acted as the mediator between them, smoothing their misunderstandings and papering over the miscommunications to keep the two of them civil even through the worst of their clashes. For a moment she softens, stroking his cheek again.

“He’s so proud of you, you have no idea.”

“Really?” Chris is pretty impressed that as dreadful as he feels right now he can still manage to imbue a single word with quite so much sarcasm. “When we went out to dinner last week we exchanged what? A dozen words? He could hardly stand to be in the same room with me.” There’s more he wants to say, but he’s cut off by a sudden swell of nausea and he has to take a deep breath to quell it.

Alice steps into the silence. “That’s not fair, Chris. You were hurting so badly that night, and we were in public. The last thing he wanted was to make it worse.” There’s a note of rebuke in her voice and it’s kind of gratifying, Chris thinks, that his mother at least isn’t treating him like something so broken that he can’t stand a reprimand. “You’d just handed over your ship. Everyone else might have been fooled by that act you put on, for the brass and the press and even that brave boy of a captain that you’re so desperate to protect – but we weren’t.”

She hesitates for a moment, and Chris turns his head to look into eyes that are just like his own, the pale blue-gray so sad and sympathetic that he has too look away again, his throat tight as she goes on. “You gave up so much, you waited so patiently for her.”

Chris isn’t entirely sure that’s true, but he doesn’t interrupt, and Alice continues. “She was yours, you deserved her, and then in one terrible, horrific day it was all gone. Josh was devastated when he found out that they were taking her away from you. He was a starship captain for over forty years, don’t you think if anyone understands what you’re going through, it would be him?”

“Never thought about it like that.” Chris would like to think that it’s the exhaustion that's lending his tone a little more petulance than he’s comfortable with, but he’s not sure that would be the truth. He swallows hard, “I just wish he’d say something, anything, to let me know that he doesn't think less of me for this.”

“I know, honey. I know. It’s always been so hard for you two to talk to each other. You’re too alike, you know that, don’t you?”

“I suppose.” He’s not sure he likes the idea that he and Josh are that similar, but he’s not sure it’s untrue either, and he cedes the point, leaning back on the pillows and letting Alice take his hand again, her grip vital and reassuring.

The strength in her hand shouldn’t surprise him, even at 83 she’s still working part time as the principal vet in the Mojave Large Animal Clinic. Still the same tough, smart, fiercely independent woman that she’d been when his ten-year-old self had spent his weekends trailing after her to farms and ranches all around south-western Kern County, delivering foals and treating sick steers and giving ranch hands hell for not maintaining the snake-barriers around the corrals.

She squeezes gently after a moment and asks, “How old were you the last time you let me hold your hand?”

He has to think about it for a moment but then he remembers, and remembers too why it was the last time. “Eleven, I think. Great-granpa Jack’s funeral?”

“Yep, seems like that was it. I tried a few times after that and you always found a way out of it.”

The feel of her thumb rubbing across the back of his hand is remarkably soothing, and after the briefest hesitation, not sure if this is a conversation he can handle right now, but equally sure that this maybe the only time he can bring himself to say the words, he goes on – voice quiet, trying to make sure there’s no accusation in his tone.

“I heard you and Dad, that night, fighting about it. I heard what he said about being a man.”

He hates the way that the admission makes her her breath catch, the pained sound of someone suddenly aware of a wound she’d never seen before.

“Oh Chris – I’m sorry. You shouldn't have had to hear that. And no-one should have to be a man at eleven. I won that fight you know, he backed down.”

“Didn’t matter.” Chris can’t quite believe how much this still hurts. He had been so shocked that night, just at the age where what Josh thought of him was so much more important than what Alice thought. He had always known that he had her unconditional love; knowing that his father valued him had always been trickier and the thought that Josh believed him not a man because he’d needed to hold his mother’s hand at a funeral had cut him deeply enough that he’d never quite forgotten it.

“He said that’s what he expected from a man, and that’s all I ever wanted to be for him.”

“I am so sorry sweetheart. I can’t believe you’ve both let such little things come between you.” Another squeeze of her hand, as if she’s reinforcing just how stupid that argument had been so many years before. “So many misunderstandings, just because the two of you won’t talk to each other.”

She’s silent for a moment and Chris tilts his head, watching her think. “Why do I get the feeling you’re planning something?”

“Because I am, I think it’s time you cleared the air. If I talk to him first, will you and Phil come down to the ranch when you’re feeling better?”

“I guess.” There’s reluctance in his voice, and deep suspicion, but Chris knows he needs to do this, needs to stop churning this fruitless, undeserved guilt around in his head and get past it or his recovery is going to never move forward.

“Good boy.” Another squeeze of his hand and then she changes the subject. “How’d you feel?”

He pauses, eyes closed and concentrates on the sharp, stinging sensations that are beginning to prickle along his limbs, more annoying than painful right now, they’ll soon morph into agonizing muscle spasms as the time-release second round of the remediation fluid begins the slow process of drawing the toxins out of his muscles and organs. “I’m okay right now, another hour or so and it’ll get bad.”

“Okay – I’ll wait until then to wake Phil.”

She settles back in the chair by the bed, her hand still clasped in his, and smiles. “Do you remember what I used to do when you were sick? It always made you feel better, or at least rest better.”

“What? Are you going to sing to me? Like I’m five again?”

“You’ll always be five to me.”

Her voice isn’t as strong as it was forty years ago, but it’s still true and smooth and the familiarity of the sound of it, softly singing the words of songs that Chris hasn’t heard since he was a child and her voice was his anchor in the night when he was scared and tired, finally break through the last of his resistance. He closes his eyes, lying back on the pillows and lets the grief overflow in a silent, liberating catharsis.

_“I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night,_  
Alive as you and me.  
Says I, but Joe you’re ten years dead.  
I never died said he, I never died said he…” 

 

****

The big picture window in the ranch kitchen looks out onto the pool patio, and Alice stands in front of it, rubbing lime and salt and chili and a little agave-sugar onto skinless chicken pieces in preparation for baking them. Beside her Phil is busy turning potatoes and carrots and onions and peppers into bite-sized chunks that will rest on the roasting pan under the chicken and they both smile as Josh drops down on to one of the loungers by the pool, and throws out a remark to Chris, who laughs and stretches, obviously enjoying the early-summer sun.

“Whatever the hell you said to him, it’s like you lifted the weight of the world off his shoulders.”

“Well, maybe just the weight of thinking Josh blamed him for something that never even happened.” She grins at Phil, watching him for a moment, gratified that he looks better-rested than he has in months. “Anyway, I think it was the conversation I had with Josh, a couple of days later, that made more of a difference.” She looks back out to the patio, frowning slightly “Obstinate son-of-a-bitch – it’s never been easy for Josh to admit when he’s hurting.”

“Oh yeah, and Chris is so much more mature about it…” The sarcasm in Phil’s voice makes Alice laugh and she lays the chicken into the roasting pan on top of Phil’s neatly-diced vegetables, “Well, that’s the curse of loving stubborn men.”

“I ‘sppose…” Phil takes the pan from her and slides it into the smaller of the two ovens in the deceptively old-fashioned-looking range. “…anyway, whatever you said, at least they’re talking now.”

“They are, indeed they are.” And then, with a grin and mischief in her voice, she nods towards the bowl of limes on the kitchen island. “I think you and I deserve a margarita for putting up with all their bullshit.”

Phil laughs, leaning back against the counter “You have no idea what I’d put up with for one of your mason-jar margaritas, Alice. The best this side of El Paso.”

She nods her head towards the screen-door. “Go on, see if Josh wants one. I’ll be out with yours in a minute.” And when Phil shuts the door behind him, she looks out the window again and smiles at the sight of Chris and Josh laughing. It’s obvious that they are trading funny stories about something, probably command-related, and Alice basks for a moment in the knowledge that the men she loves are safe and for the first time in as long as she can remember, they seem to be content in each other’s company.

_fin_


End file.
